This last day of the outside world’s work week has dawned bright and sunny, a hint of haze but none of rain in the air. This is normally the busy season here, these days on the downward slope of summer, but the land is haunted now by a sense of inertia and its accompanying entropy, even as it’s heavy with the sense of something approaching, large, fast, and with a capacity for great and deadly impact.
Normally, our small world here would be abuzz with activity now: traditional activities, including preparation both for pilgrimage and for the feast day that marks summer’s passing at September’s end, but also more quotidian tasks, from mudding and plastering and refacing the old homes in the village to an all-out push at one last irrigation effort, one last round of work for one more cut of hay, one last attempt to persuade the earth to yield as much as possible for harvest. These are long days and short nights, a time when the sun rises impossibly early and yet never quite early enough to get done all the work that needs doing now.
What the drought has not altered, the pandemic has largely finished. There will be traditional activities and events, of course, but none will be open to the public this season. Meanwhile, the constant flow of traffic along the highway belies its actual results; as always, the machinery of colonialism grinds on, but there’s precious little to show for it now beyond wholly unnecessary harm. Our peoples regroup and make a way regardless, and sometimes, it’s not so much a matter of forging a new path as it is returning to one as old as time.
And this is where our histories and our ways have the edge in times such as these. Our expectations are built not around authority and control, but community and harmony; not around greed and despoliation and theft, but around lives lived in balance with an earth that births and nurtures us. We know the promise of summer’s ancient paths, and we find our footing upon them now.
Today’s featured work illustrates those old ways and ancient paths in all the beautiful shades of the season: turquoise skies, white clouds, red earth, green sage. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
The Rabbit Hunt Small Painting
Traditionally-dressed tribal members on horseback participate in a rabbit hunt in the shadow of the mountain. Summer thunderheads tower above in the turquoise sky, the warm red earth beneath the horses’ hooves dotted with stones and silvery sage. Unframed; 8-5/8″ wide by 6″ high (dimensions approximate).
Acrylic on canvas stretched over wood
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Even if the work has not slowed in any appreciable way, this temporary shutdown of other aspects of life now has allowed us all, strangely, to reconnect a bit, if mostly at a distance. The artist who painted this is Frank Rain Leaf, one of Wings’s “brothers” in our peoples’ way of reckoning relationships; they grew up together as children, and as artists too. We saw him just a couple of weeks ago, and he is still producing extraordinary new work. We now have two more of his works in our home, one much like this, if larger and of a different subject: unframed stretched canvas that catches and channels all the changes in the light throughout the painting itself.
For now, as we labor under skies that look nearly identical to those in this painting, we are reminded of the blessings that accompany this slowdown, a lesson in perceiving, acknowledging, honoring the gifts of the earth and the spirits even when what the outside world delivers is an endless stream of terrible developments.
We need the blessings and the beauty; we need the joy to find the strength of heart to fight. And when the way is blocked by forces beyond our control, it’s time to do what our peoples do at this season every year anyway: time to return to the promise of summer’s ancient paths.
~ Aji
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